Tourists look towards North Korea across the Demilitarized Zone as propaganda blasts through loudspeakers in Paju, South Korea, in May 2017. (Aaron Kidd/Stars and Stripes)
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea briefly resumed loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts aimed at North Korea on Thursday, the same day Pyongyang sent roughly 40 trash-laden balloons across the border, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The broadcasts started that night and stopped the next morning, the Joint Chiefs said in a statement to news reporters early Friday.
“The South Korean military’s future response depends entirely on North Korea’s actions,” the statement said.
The content of this week’s broadcasts was undisclosed. Previous broadcasts included South Korean pop music and news reports from Seoul. The last broadcasts from South Korea occurred June 9.
The latest round of North Korean balloons was sent late Thursday toward west Gyeonggi province, the South’s most populous region, according to the Joint Chiefs. South Korea’s mass-alert system advised citizens on their cellphones not to touch the balloon payloads and report them to the nearest military unit or police station.
The balloons were carrying paper trash; no hazardous substances were found after a preliminary investigation, the Joint Chiefs said.
North Korea since May 28 has sent thousands of balloons carrying bags of household trash and manure across its southern border, according to the South’s Ministry of National Defense. The descending balloons damaged a few parked vehicles and residential roofs, and caused some flight delays in the country, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Interior.
The communist regime says its campaign is in retaliation against South Korean human rights activists, many of them North Korean defectors, who float their own balloons carrying money, rice, short-wave radios and anti-Pyongyang leaflets into North Korea.
The North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported the country collected 29 balloons originating from the South on Tuesday. Kim Yo Jong — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister — said in the report that the incident can “no longer be overlooked” and warned of a “gruesome and horrible cost.”
The North’s balloons prompted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to suspend a military deconfliction agreement with Pyongyang on June 4.
In addition to the balloons, the South’s military said the suspension was predicated by North Korea firing over a dozen ballistic missiles in eight separate days of testing so far this year and its frequent GPS jamming attacks at the Demilitarized Zone.
The agreement, which prohibited military drills and enacted no fly-zones near the DMZ, will be suspended “until mutual trust” is restored between the two Koreas, the South’s military said at the time.
Following the suspension, South Korea’s army and marine corps carried out artillery drills near the DMZ and maritime border on June 26 and July 3.
